The former administrator of St. Jerome Hospital returned to Batavia on Friday to attend a tribute to the Sisters of Mercy which operated the hospital for 83 years.

Sister Nancy Hoff, now president of the Sisters of Mercy, was head of the hospital for 32 years.

She said it was a “difficult decision” to give up the hospital ministry in Batavia a decade ago, but added, “it was the right thing to do.”

The tribute, organized by The Jerome Foundation and the UMMC Foundation, was attended by 15 nuns from the Sisters of Mercy.

The Sisters started the hospital in two donated houses in 1917 and completed a U-shaped, six-story building in the mid- 1950s. St. Jerome Hospital was merged in 2000 with Genesee Memorial to form United Memorial Medical Center.

The former hospital at 16 Bank St., vacant for several years, has been converted into a ground-floor diagnostic and treatment center with 37 apartments on the top four floors.